US Appeals court strikes down Illinois ban on concealed carry

Source: Chicago Tribune

The state of Illinois would have to allow ordinary citizens to carry weapons under a federal appeals court ruling issued today, but the judges also gave lawmakers 180 days to put their own version of the law in place.

20. If you live in Illinois there are already people around you who are carrying concealed firearms...

Legally by off-duty police, judges, private investigators, bodyguards of the rich and famous, and Aldermen.

Illegally by criminals who don't care about the law no matter what it says.

I'm sure the Illinois state legislature will impose significant legal hoops and expense on the process of getting a permit, and they'll almost certainly leave it to the discretion of local law enforcement people to decide who is worthy of exercising that right and who is not. Rest assured the "undesirable" people in your area need not apply.

25. Not explicitly that I noticed. They did condemn the NY ruling, however:

The New York gun law upheld in Kachalsky, although
one of the nation’s most restrictive such laws (under
the law’s “proper cause” standard, an applicant for a
gun permit must demonstrate a need for self-defense
greater than that of the general public, such as being
the target of personal threats, id. at *3, *8), is less restrictive
than Illinois’s law. Our principal reservation about
the Second Circuit ’s analy s i s (apart from
disagreement, unnecessary to bore the reader with,
with some of the historical analysis in the opinion—
we regard the historical issues as settled by Heller)
is its suggestion that the Second Amendment should
have much greater scope inside the home than
outside simply because other provisions of the Constitution
have been held to make that distinction. For example,
the opinion states that “in Lawrence v. Texas, the
Court emphasized that the state’s efforts to
regulate private sexual conduct between consenting adults
is especially suspect when it intrudes into the home.”
2012 WL 5907502, at *9. Well of course—the interest in
having sex inside one’s home is much greater than
the interest in having sex on the sidewalk in front of
one’s home. But the interest in self-protection is as great
outside as inside the home.

If the right exists outside the home as certainly as it does inside the home, it's hard to see how "may issue" can survive. Guns inside the home are not "may issue."

36. I have read the history and the cases

37. So you know all about how the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly set out to

force the states to respect the personal, individual right to keep and bear arms?

You know that the first time the Supreme Court mentioned the right to keep and bear arms it called it, along with other rights from the Bill of Rights, one of the "rights of person"--an individual right?

You know that the court has said more recently (but before Heller) that the term "the people" is used in the Bill of Rights when the Constitution is speaking of individual rights?

38. Yep, I just agree with the dissenting opinion of the four liberal justices...

... whose views most Democrats consider to be intellectually sounder than the conclusions of the five rabid wingnuts who gave us Citizens United and Bush v. Gore, whose decision in Heller you are triumphantly trumpeting.

41. True, but the company one keeps should give one pause

The credibility of psychotic nazis is appropriately questioned, even when one does agree with them.

More to the point, however, the traditionally sane judges on the court, as usual, articulated a far sounder and more persuasive argument in their dissenting opinion than Mad Dog Scalia did in his majority opinion.

42. The thing is, I believed most of what Scalia said before he ever heard of Dick Heller or

picked up a pen (figuratively speaking) to write his opinion. I made some of the same arguments and cited some of his sources right here on DU. I am not keeping his company, he is keeping mine (though of course I didn't influence him).

The "sounder and more persuasive argument" ignored the history I spoke of, in part because the 14th Amendment was not directly implicated. If you look at history in its entirety, the minority opinion defies history; in order for it to be correct, the explicitly expressed intent of the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Amendment itself, multiple statements of Congress and lots of (non-racist) precedent have to be thrown out.

There is a reason why the vast majority of qualified scholars have capitulated on this subject. Many hate the Second Amendment so they have not suddenly sworn fealty to the NRA; they actually looked at the evidence.

43. Of course you did

So did Scalia. The history or fact pattern of Heller were no more important to him than it was to you. You both made up your minds a long time ago that you love guns and are happy to bend reality to suit your desires.

It's odd, I don't think I've ever heard of Scalia and Thomas referred to before as being "qualified scholars," and evidently more qualified scholars than people like Breyer and Ginsburg in your estimation.

44. Sigh...

Some of the history I cited cannot possibly exist in the same intellectual universe as the losing Justices' theory. You are the one who hates guns and is bending reality to maintain your policy preferences.

What you don't know--and probably won't believe after I tell you--is that I started out believing in the anti-gun position. The evidence went against my beliefs. I didn't bend reality like you do; reality bent me.

As for qualified scholars, I'm talking about people at places like Harvard, Yale, and other law schools--eminent law professors. I wasn't talking about anyone on the Supreme Court, current or past. People like Akhil Reed Amar, Larry Tribe and even Alan Dershowitz, who could have been speaking about you:

Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a public safety hazard don't see the danger in the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like.

You're clinging to an anti-historical, discredited theory. It is possible to be informed and intellectually honest and oppose the individual, personal right to keep and bear one's personal arms. It is possible to be informed and intellectually honest and support repeal of the Second Amendment. It is not possible to be informed and intellectually honest and support the Heller dissent.

32. What does "multiple" or "crowd" have to do with it? Aren't the issues "killing" and "public"?

I have no idea how many times people have killed multiple victims in a crowd using martial arts. However, if someone killed you--and only you--after isolating you in a "public" place, I don't think the fact that you weren't in a crowd at the time or that you were the only person killed would comfort your loved ones.

And that would be true whether they used martial arts, a gun, or a knife, or simply brute force and adrenaline.

16. Support from a leading Alderman! There's a surprise

Ald. Howard Brookins, 21st, chairman of the City Council black caucus, welcomed the decision, saying allowing Chicagoans to carry concealed weapons would help level the playing field in neighborhoods where law-abiding citizens feel like they need firearms to protect themselves.

"Certain people will have a sense of safety and peace of mind in the ability to do it," Brookins said of conceal-carry. "I know that even people, for example, just trying to see that their loved ones get homes safely are in technical violation of all sorts of weapons violations. If you just walk out to your garage and see that your wife is coming in the house safely, and you happen to have your gun on you, you're in technical violation of our ordinance. So I would hope all these ordinances would be consolidated so there's one set of rules and people would know where the bright line is to what they can and cannot do with respect to carrying a weapon."

Brookins said he's not worried doing away with the state ban would lead to an increase in gun violence as more people walk the streets with weapons. "I think those people have a gun now, they've just been made criminals because they can't legally have it," Brookins said. "And I think the gangbangers and thugs are going to have a gun regardless."

17. Yes, finally the truth is being acknowledged:

“What we are most pleased about is how the court has recognized that the Second Amendment is just as, if not at times more, important in public as it is in the home,” he said. “The right of self-defense doesn’t end at your front door.”

In the opinion, Posner wrote that “a Chicagoan is a good deal more likely to be attacked on a sidewalk in a rough neighborhood than in his apartment on the 35th floor of the Park Tower.”

Duh...

The Supreme Court rulings only covered guns in the home because the case before them only related to guns in the home. But nothing in the language of the Second Amendment or in its legal history supports limiting the right to homes.

18. Good. I live in Chicago and have been arguing with a friend about this for years.

I'm not sure, but I don't *think* allowing concealed carry has led to some great surge in crime in any of the many other states that allow it. Let's set some requirements for permitting and get on with it.

26. The dissent has the better argument then Posner and the Majority

I think this case is headed for the US Supreme Court for it is OPPOSITE KACHALSKY v. COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER, where the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that upholding the right of New York State to deny people the right to carry concealed weapons:

Thus we have a split in the circuits and that adds extra reasons for the Supreme Court to take the case on appeal.

Back to the opinion, the dissent, following District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) and citing it repeatedly, would have held that banning concealed weapons on public streets does NOT violate the Right to Bear arms. Thus the issue is how restrictive can a state get and still pass the right to Bear arms test.

46. Posner also wrote an opinion that a drug addict is employable

Under the Social Security Act, if a person is unable to hold a full time job due to a "Medically Determinable Disability", he or she is disabled under the Act and eligible to get Social Security Disability (if he or she has a work background) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) if he or she does NOT have a work background.

In the mid 1990s this became a big political issue, when the GOP made a big deal that the Courts had ruled that being a Drug Addict and/or Alcoholic was a "Medically Determinable Disability" that could make a person "Disabled" under the Social Security Act. Congress then passed a law modifying the rule in an attempt to overturn the Court rulings. The Courts then took that modification and strictly construed it, to limit its effectiveness, but it did force people off the Social Security Disability and SSI roles.

Side note: Prior to the above changes in the mid 1990s, while the Courts order the Social Security Administration to treat Drug Addicts and/or Alcoholics like any other disabled persons, the courts also accepted that Social Security had always treated people that Social Security Administration determined could NOT handle they own money to have someone else handle that person's money. This included Drug Addicts and/or Alcoholics who were on Social Security and SSI for other reasons. i.e Such Drug Addicts and/or Alcoholics NEVER received the money directly, it went to a third party that made sure the rent was paid and the Drug Addict and/or Alcoholic had food in their home. Little if any money went directly to the Drug Addict and/or Alcoholic. This fact did NOT stop Congress from changing the rules for the above paragraph is hard to put into a 30 second TV Ad,

Anyway, prior to the above changes in the 1990s, the Rule to get Social Security Disability or SSI benefits if you were a Drug Addict and/or Alcoholic was two fold:

1. You could NOT quit

2. You could not work.

If you FAILED either test, you were NOT eligible for Social Security Disability or SSI benefits. Notice it is a two step test AFTER you were found to be a Drug Addict and/or Alcoholic. I had many a case during that time period where I had clients that failed the second test, the Administrative Law Judge determined that a Drug Addict and/or Alcoholic could work despite him being a Drug Addict and/or Alcoholic and thus NOT disabled under the Social Security Act (And this is BEFORE the changes Congress made making it harder for Drug Addicts and/or Alcoholics to get on Social Security Disability or SSI).

Judge Posner, in a case I was NOT involved with, was presented a case of a Drug Addict, who could NOT quit (Thus passed the first test) but was determined he could work because as a Drug Addict he also sold Drugs to support his habit. The fact that he sold drugs, showed he was capable of doing sales, he Knew his customer's needs, where they were, and how to get them to buy, he knew how to purchase goods for re-sale, he thus knew supply, distribution and sales and with such knowledge the drug addict could do work and thus even as a drug addict he was employable and NOT eligible for Social Security Disability or SSI benefits.

This was true even if such supply, distribution and sales background was product specific (i.e. in the sales of illegal drugs only) and could NOT be transferred to other types of sale jobs.

My comment on hearing of that decision, was what did Posner want the drug addict to do, die in the streets? For if you look at the background of the Claimant in that case, that was the alternative to Social Security Disability or SSI benefits.

As i said, Congress right afterward changed the law to make it more restrictive for Drug addicts and Alcoholics to get Social Security Disability or SSI benefits (And then took years for the Social Security Administration to issue the needed regulations, due to the fact most if not all Drug Addicts and Alcoholics also had severe mental problems that overlap the Drug addiction and Alcohol abuse. Thus the regulations had to reflect what Congress had passed, the Courts decision ruling Alcoholism and Drug Addiction were medically determinable medical conditions AND the overlap with other mental disorders. When the Regulation were issued, most Drug Addicts and Alcoholics ended up being ruled disabled for Social Security Disability or SSI benefits on the mental grounds).

Just a comment on Posner, he is considered a very good judge when it comes to economics and business but when he gets away from those two subjects his opinions are less compelling.

27. I'd like the Illinois legislature to reaffirm their long standing law and tell the Court of Appeals

33. That would be very good for gun rights.

It might even provoke the Congress and Supreme Court to use their legitimate powers to bring rebellious states to heel.

The Fourteenth Amendment was explicitly intended and written to empower the Congress to FORCE the states to respect the right of individual citizens to personally bear their private arms. At least that's what the authors said they intended.